Benefits of Using Access Keys in HTML?

kandresen asks: "I have been considering the use of access keys in my web site as an accessibility feature, and was originally looking at possible side effects this could have for people with PCs and Macs, however in my search I found the problem was far wider than just that, as people with different language version of these OS'es may have different key bindings. Many of the websites I deal with have an International reach, so I can see this may limit the available keys quite a bit. The better approach, which would avoid the entire problem, unfortunately does not seem to be a reality, even in the upcoming version of XHTML 2. So, I wonder whether other webmasters have had many complaints from their users regarding the use of access keys interfering with system specific shortcuts, such as bookmarking, help functions, accessing of favorites, and so forth. Do you have any tips as for how to avoid negative side effects? Are there some keys that do not cause much problems regardless of language, OS, or the client being used? Is there a way to use Javascript to take care of such problems?"

Comments

Meh.

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Sounds like a good idea, and as a keyboard cowboy I appreciate it, but the first time I tried to leave a webpage by hitting alt+d to go to the address bar to type a url and got a donation page I was instantly turned off by the idea. While you can do it right, its rarely worth the effort unless you're doing a full out web app, and even then keep it optional.